12/23/2010

Then just over a year ago, I was let go from NewsGator. For the record, it was the right decision, and there are absolutely no bad feelings between myself and NewsGator. They treated me very well while I was there, and I'm still friends with my co-workers.

But that left me in a tight spot: I had to pay the bills with whatever money FeedDemon generated, and as popular as FeedDemon is, it's not popular enough to bring in enough cash through ads alone. And very few people were paying just to get rid of the ads (can you blame them?).

For a year I kept FeedDemon free, and I started work on FeedDemon 4.0 in the hopes I could find a way to keep it free yet still pay the bills. But eventually it was clear that the only way to keep FeedDemon (and myself) going was to start charging for it again, and I figured the best way to do that was to come out with a free ad-supported Lite version with fewer features, along with a for-pay Pro version that had all the features and no ads. That way there would still be a free version, which I knew had to exist, while at the same time there would be a way I could charge for a more feature-rich version.

11/23/2009

With the possible exceptions of Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, no modern era politician has been more derided by the media than Sarah Palin. And the attacks do not stop with her. They include nasty rumors about her family and even the mocking of her children.

Palin has responded to some of the vitriol in her new book, Going Rogue, hoping to give readers her side on controversies like the expensive clothes, the interview gaffes and Alaska's "Troopergate" case.

How have the media received the former Alaska governor's side of the story? Not well. She is being called a whiner and an ingrate, among other things.

Uber-liberal Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution says: "There is absolutely nothing in Sarah Palin's past that suggested she was ever going to let the past go. She's always been petty. She's always been vindictive."

Let's get this straight: Media people like Tucker can hammer Palin all day long, but if she defends herself, she's petty and vindictive.

11/20/2009

Indeed, some of us will always be sympathetic to Mrs. Palin if for nothing else than her enemies. The bile she extracts from her critics is almost like a dye marker, illuminating deep pockets of asininity that heretofore were either unnoticed or underappreciated. ...

I'm happy about the books she's selling thanks to the controversy over her, but that doesn't mean I think these controversies are justified. Palin holds no public office and, as of yet, is not running for one. But the Associated Press assigned 11 reporters to "fact-check" her book, while doing nothing like that to fact-check then-candidate Obama's or current Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's no doubt riveting book.